(By Mr. Punch's Own Type Writer.)
No. XXV.—THE ADULATED CLERGYMAN.
The Adulated Clergyman possesses many of the genuine qualities of the domestic cat, in addition to a large stock of the characteristics which tradition has erroneously assigned to that humble but misunderstood animal. Like a cat, he is generally sleek and has become an adept in the art of ingratiating himself with those who wear skirts and dispense comforts. Like a cat, too, he has an insinuating manner; he can purr quite admirably in luxurious surroundings, and, on the whole, he prefers to attain his objects by a circuitous method rather than by the bluff and uncompromising directness which is employed by dogs and ordinary honest folk of the canine sort. Moreover, he likes a home, but—here comes the difference—the homes of others seem to attract and retain him more strongly than his own. And if it were useful to set out the points of difference in greater detail, it might be said that the genuine as opposed to the traditional cat often shows true affection and quite a dignified resentment of snubs, is never unduly familiar, and makes no pretence of being better than other cats whose coats happen to be of a different colour. But it is better, perhaps, at once to consider the Adulated Clergyman in his own person, and not in his points of resemblance to or difference from other animals.
He who afterwards becomes an Adulated Clergyman has probably been a mean and grubby schoolboy, with a wretched but irresistible inclination to sneak, and to defend himself for so doing on principle. It is of course wrong to break rules at school, authority must be respected, masters must be obeyed, but it is an honourable tradition amongst schoolboys that boys who offend—since offences must come—should owe their consequent punishment to the unassisted efforts of those who hold rule, rather than to the calculating interference of another boy, who, though he may have shared the offence, is unwilling to take his proportion of the result. A sneak, therefore, has in all ages been invested with a badge of infamy, which no amount of strictly scholastic success has ever availed to remove from him; and his fellows, recognising that he has saved his own skin at the expense of theirs, do their best to make up the difference to him in contempt and abuse. Schoolboys are not distinguished for a fastidious reticence. If they dislike, they never hesitate to say so, and they have a painfully downright way of giving reasons for their behaviour, which is apt to jar on a temperament so sensitive that its owner always and only treads the path of high principle when self-interest points him in the same direction.
The school career of the future pastor was not, therefore, a very happy one, for at school there are no feeble women to be captivated by heartrending revelations of a noble nature at war with universal wickedness, and all but shattered by the assaults of an unfeeling world. Nor, strange to say, do schoolmasters, as a rule, value the boy who ranges himself on their side in the eternal war between boys and masters. However, he proceeded in due time to a University. There he let it be known that his ultimate destination was the Church, but he had his own method of qualifying for his profession. He was not afflicted with the possession of great muscular strength, or of a very robust health. Neither the river nor the football-field attracted him. Cricket was a bore, athletic sports were a burden; the rough manners of the ordinary Undergraduates made him shudder. However, since at College there are sets of all sorts and sizes, he soon managed to fashion for himself a little world of effete and mincing idlers, who adored themselves even more than they worshipped one another. They drank deep from the well of modern French literature, and chattered interminably of RICHEPIN, GUY DE MAUPASSANT, PAUL BOURGET, and the rest. They themselves were their own favourite native writers; but their morbid sonnets, their love-lorn elegies, their versified mixtures of passion and a quasi-religious mysticism, were too sacred for print, though they were sometimes adapted to thin and fluttering airs, and sung to sympathisers in private. Most of these gentlemen were "ploughed" in their examination, but the hero of this sketch secured his degree without honours, and departed to read for the Church.
Soon afterwards he was ordained, was plunged ruthlessly into an East-End parish, and disappeared for a time from view. He emerged, after an interval of several years. The occasion was the inaugural meeting of a Guild for the Conversion of Music-hall Artistes, which is to this day spoken of amongst the irreverent as the Song and Sermon Society. The sensation of the meeting was caused by the fervent speech of a clergyman, who announced that he himself had been for some months a professional Variety Singer, attached to more than one Music-hall, and that, having studied the life de près, he knew all its temptations, and was therefore qualified to speak from experience as to the best means of elevating those who pursued it. The details of his story, as they fell from the mouth of the reverend speaker, were highly spiced. His hearers were amused, interested, and stirred; and, when a daily newspaper gave a headlined account of the speech, with a portrait of the speaker, the professional fortune of the Adulated Clergyman (for it was he) was assured.
Shortly afterwards his biography appeared in a series published in a weekly periodical under the title of Unconventional Clerics, and he himself wrote a touching letter on "The Plague Spots of Nova Zembla," in which an eloquent appeal was made for subscriptions on behalf of the inhabitants of that chill and neglected region. Ladies now began to say to one another: "Have you heard Mr. So-and-So preach? Really, not? Oh, you should. He's so wonderful, so convincing, so unlike all others. You must come with me next Sunday," and thus gradually he gathered round him in his remote church a band of faithful women, drawn from the West End by the fame of his unconventional eloquence. A not too fastidious critic might, perhaps, have been startled by a note of vulgarity in his references to sacred events, as well as by the tone of easy and intimate familiarity with which he spoke of those whose names are generally mentioned with bated breath, and printed with capital letters; but the most refined women seemed to find in all this an additional fascination. His sermons dealt in language which was at the same time plain and highly-coloured. He denounced his congregation roundly as the meanest of sinners. To the women he was particularly merciless. He tore to rags their little vesture of self-respect, shattered their nerves with emotional appeals, harrowed all their feelings, and belaboured them so violently with prophecies of wrath, that they left church, after shedding gallons of tears and emptying their expiatory purses into the subscription-plate, in a state of pale but pious pulp. In the drawing-rooms, however, to which he afterwards resorted, his manner changed. His voice became soft; he poured oil into the wounds he had inflicted. "How are you to-day?" he would say, in his caressing way. "Is the neuralgia any better? And the dulness of spirits? has meditation prevailed over it? Ah me! it is the lot of the good to suffer, and silence, perhaps, were best." Whereupon he is treated as a Father Confessor of domestic troubles, and persuades young married women that their husbands misunderstand them.
It is unnecessary to add that his subscription-lists flourished, his bazaars prospered, his missions and retreats overflowed with feminine money, and his Church was overloaded with floral tributes. The brutal tribe of men, however, sneered at him, and perversely suspected his motives; nor were they reconciled to him when they saw him relieving the gloom of a generally (so it was understood) ascetic existence by dining at a smart restaurant with a galaxy of devoted women, whom he proposed to conduct in person to a theatre. Such, then, is, or was, the Adulated Clergyman. It is unnecessary to pursue his career further. Perhaps he quarrelled with his Bishop, and unfrocked himself; possibly he found himself in a Court of Law, where an unsympathetic jury recorded a painful verdict against him.